Caps Seek Split on Broadway

Every time you step on the ice for a Stanley Cup playoff
game, the idea is to win it. But every team also knows it’s not going to go
16-0 en route to claiming the coveted chalice.

I’m looking at you, San Jose.

So the idea is to minimize losing and to avoid losing in
chunks. Washington’s modest two-game winning streak came to a halt with its 4-3
loss to the Rangers in Monday night’s Game 3 of the Eastern Conference
quarterfinal series between the two clubs. Nobody expected either team to sweep
this series, so that makes everybody right.

Congratulations.

What Washington would like to accomplish in its visit to
Manhattan is the same thing the Rangers wanted – but failed – to do in the
first two games of the series, win at least one game on the road.

With a victory in tonight’s Game 4 here at Madison Square
Garden, the Caps can accomplish that mission and put themselves in position to
close out the Rangers on Friday when the series shifts back to Verizon Center
for Game 5. On the other hand, if the Rangers win Wednesday’s Game 4, the
series shrinks to a best-of-three set with Washington still maintaining home
ice advantage.

“That’s playoff hockey,” says Caps forward Matt Hendricks.
“You’ve got to win on the road. Our job now is to split. We have the opportunity
to split. I think we played a pretty good game last game. I don’t think our big
guns such as [Alex Ovechkin] and them got into the game early enough because of
all the penalties.

“So we need to stay disciplined, we need to stay out of the
box, play our system and play our game. We had our opportunities to score goals
last game and we need to look forward to that tonight.”

The capitals have scored seven goals against Rangers
goaltender and Vezina Trophy finalist Henrik Lundqvist in this series. Lundqvist
was at his absolute best in Saturday’s Game 2 at Verizon Center, stopping 37 of
the 38 shots he faced. The Caps needed an overtime goal from Mike Green on the
power play in order to eke out a 1-0 win in that game.

For just the third time in 22 postseason games against
Lundqvist, the Caps managed to score three even-strength goals against the
Rangers goalie in Monday’s Game 3. But New York netted four of its own, giving
Lundqvist his first playoff win when allowing three or more goals since April
15, 2009.

Lundqvist had been 0-14 in the previous 14 Stanley Cup
playoff games in which he had surrendered three or more goals.

“You’ve got to screen him, I think,” says Caps center
Nicklas Backstrom of Lundqvist. “He’s good at reacting. But traffic I think is
the biggest key.”

The previous 188 minutes of this series would support
Backstrom’s theory. Washington has scored just one goal on the rush, a Marcus
Johansson goal in the second period of Game 1 that Lundqvist would probably
tell you he should have stopped.

Each of the Capitals’ other six goals in the series have
come from being in the Rangers’ end and working the puck back above the top of
the circles, taking a shot and having traffic in front. Three of the six were
deflected past Lundqvist.

“He’s a world class goalie,” says Caps left wing Jason
Chimera. “He’s going to stop what he sees. A lot of our goals are just traffic
and tips and stuff that he can’t react to. It’s tough to beat him one-on-one.
When he sees a shot, he’s one of the best goalies at reading sticks [as to]
where it’s going to shoot. You’ve got to get traffic in front of him and throw
a whole bunch of stuff at the net and hope some stuff goes in.”

Washington has been dominant at even strength in the last
two games of the series, attempting a total of 117 shots at even-strength to
just 79 for the Rangers in the 98 minutes and 58 seconds in which the sides
have been all even in those two games.

The trick for the Capitals in Game 4 will be to maximize
that even-strength time. The Caps were forced to kill six penalties in Game 3,
a figure that proved too high. The Rangers scored their first power-play goal
of the series and tallied another just as a Washington minor expired.

That accounted for the difference in the game.

“We thought we played a pretty good game in Game 3,” says
Chimera, “it was just the penalties that kind of killed our momentum. We want
it five-on-five. I think that’s when we’re at our best. We’ve got a pretty deep
hockey team and we want to get back to that.”

Washington is confident that if it doesn’t take more
penalties than the Rangers do in Game 4, it can restore its two-game lead in
the series with a Broadway win on Wednesday.

“You want to win every game, but obviously it was a tough
one last game,” says Backstrom. “You’ve got to make sure you come out even
harder today and execute a little better.”

As far as the idea of avoiding losses in chunks, Caps goalie
Braden Holtby is a good one to have on your side. He has yet to lose
consecutive Stanley Cup playoff games, and he has allowed exactly one goal in
the game immediately following five of his seven career playoff losses and just
two goals in the other two.

Holtby is 7-0 with a 1.21 GAA and a .962 save pct. in the
starts that follow his seven career postseason losses.